


Brothers in Arms

by polynya



Category: Bleach
Genre: Developing Relationship, Friendship, Gen, Post-War, Reflection, Trains, Walks On The Beach, the other characters are here in spirit, their vibes lay heavily upon this story, this could certainly be read as pre-romance if you like!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-23 18:07:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30059466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polynya/pseuds/polynya
Summary: “Uryuu,” Chad had said, “I have to take a trip this weekend. Will you come with me?”Uryuu said yes, without hesitation.
Relationships: Abarai Renji & Inoue Orihime & Ishida Uryuu & Kuchiki Rukia & Kurosaki Ichigo & Sado "Chad" Yasutora, Ishida Uryuu & Sado "Chad" Yasutora
Comments: 14
Kudos: 24





	Brothers in Arms

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zabiume](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zabiume/gifts).



> It's Zabiume's birthday and she deserves nice things, so I wrote this story about Chad and Uryuu After the War. How are there literally no works in the Uryuu & Chad tag?? WELP, there are now. It's not at all shippy, even tho I ship 'em (well, maybe there's one thing at the end that I find deeply romantic, but it might just be me), so please everyone feel free to read this whichever way you please.

“Uryuu,” Chad had said, “I have to take a trip this weekend. Will you come with me?”

Uryuu said yes, without hesitation.

Chad was not an asker-of-favors, yet he was a doer-of-favors, a man who showed up wherever and whenever he was needed, to move boxes or round out a football squad or set up a festival booth, and Uryuu felt that he deserved this: an immediate ‘yes’, no questions asked.

At the moment, Uryuu would have done any favor, no questions asked, for any of his friends. They hadn’t asked him any questions after all, once they returned from Soul Society, tired and bloody, miraculously all in one piece. Uryuu hadn’t waited for questions, he’d tried to explain everything immediately. There weren’t any excuses for what he had done, but he owed them _explanations_ , and those he had tried to give in full.

None of them were mad at him.

“It must have been scary,” Orihime had said, her eyes wide and sympathetic.

“We knew you must have had a plan,” Chad had reassured him with a confident nod.

Well, maybe Kurosaki was mad at him. But not for the right reasons. “I can’t believe you thought we wouldn’t see through your dumb self-sacrificial plan! You should have let us in on it! We could have helped!”

As if he could bear to live with himself if anything happened to any of them. “Kurosaki, you can’t even _spell_ clandestine,” he had sniffed instead.

“I could if I wanted to,” Kurosaki grumped. “Spelling is for chumps.”

“I would have been a great secret agent!” Orihime announced, putting her hands on her hips. “I can do lots of accents and I bet I could swallow a canister of microfilm.”

“I would be a bad secret agent,” Chad, the only one of them with an ounce of sense, admitted. “You made the right choice.”

And that was it. A good friend, a _real_ friend, would have given Uryuu a good yelling at, or a speech filled with tearful disappointment, or maybe even just a week or two of the silent treatment. But no. Everything just went back to normal, or as normal as it got around Karakura.

Uryuu did receive a six-page typed letter from his own father, deriding his actions in excruciating detail. That made him feel a little better. But only a little.

Since a good, emotionally cleansing ostracism seemed to be out of the question, Uryuu kept trying to think of ways he could make it up to his friends. Everything he came up with just seemed like pushing his presence onto them, though: offering to help Orihime make a new dress, helping Chad transcribe some of his new musical compositions, helping out with some of the more esoteric tasks at the Shouten. It didn’t help that school was on break, and there was no convenient mechanism for eavesdropping on his friends’ minor, daily tribulations. He did bring a raspberry millefeuille to Kurosaki’s backyard birthday party, but then everyone complimented him on it, and it felt worse than if he’d never done anything at all.

But now, Chad needed a travelling companion, and Uryuu was ready, willing, and able to strike out on a moment’s notice.

He did wish he had asked where they were going, though.

So, at 7:13am on Saturday morning, Uryuu showed up at the train station, prepared for any eventuality. He wore his most comfortable athletic shoes, even though they were unattractively informal. He wore a backpack containing a compass, sunscreen, bug spray, a water bottle, his prescription sunglasses, the novel he was currently reading, a backup novel in case he finished the one he was currently reading, a set of earbuds, six Seele Schneider, ten Gintou, a windbreaker that folded up into a pouch, a cape, a back-up battery for his phone, and snacks. Chad had said to meet at 7:30, so he sat on a bench and crossed his hands.

“Hey,” Chad greeted, nineteen minutes later. “I’m glad you came.”

“Of course I came,” Uryuu replied. What… what would Chad have done if he hadn’t? Did Chad think he was the kind of person who just... wouldn’t show up?

“Here’s your ticket.” Chad handed over a slip of cardstock.

“Shimoda?” Uryuu asked, blinking at it.

“Is that okay?” Chad asked.

“It’s your trip,” Uryuu replied. “You should let me pay for the ticket, though.”

“You can buy lunch,” Chad suggested.

It wasn’t a fair exchange, but on the other hand, Uryuu was presumably doing Chad some sort of favor, so he didn’t make a big deal of it. Uryuu hoped Chad would agree to a sit-down place, and not just some convenience store onigiri. He wasn’t that familiary with Shimoda-- he’d only been to Shimoda once, on a school trip to see the Black Ships and learn about Commodore Perry. He seemed to remember there being plenty of cute shops and quaint eateries, and thinking that it might be a fun place to go on a trip. For other people, of course, who went on trips with their families. Ryuuken hated the seaside.

They found their train, which was filling up quickly with beach traffic, but they were able to find a pair of seats together.

“Do you like the window seat?” Chad asked.

“It doesn’t matter to me,” Uryuu replied. “I usually read on train trips. You’re welcome to it.” He paused. “Unless you’d rather have the aisle seat, for the leg room.”

Chad shook his head. “I like to look out the window.”

Uryuu got himself settled. He plugged his earbuds into his phone and pulled out his novel. Suddenly, it occurred to him that he was _on a trip with someone_ , maybe he was expected to be… company. Cold horror seized his nervous system. What was he going to say to _Chad_ for two and a half hours? “Er,” he said, “you don’t mind if I read, do you? Or would rather… chat?”

“Oh,” said Chad. “To be honest, I really like to look out the window and listen to music on train trips. I know it’s kind of weird, but it’s nice to just zone out. But if there’s something you want to talk about, you can just do this--” he tapped two fingers on Uryuu’s wrist, sitting on the armrest between them. “I don’t mind at all.”

“That’s not weird at all,” Uryuu protested. Being able to relax and immerse oneself in the passing scenery sounded amazing, actually. If he tried to do that, his brain would just yell at him non-stop.

“Great,” Chad nodded, and stuffed his own earbuds into his ears.

* * *

Uryuu wasn’t exactly sure how much time had passed when he felt the first tap on his wrist. He glanced up to see that Chad had taken his earbuds out and was looking earnestly at him. Uryuu carefully marked his place and paused his music.

“What’s up?”

“There’s something I wanted to ask you. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

Uryuu braced himself. “Okay. Go ahead.”

“If we were mecha pilots, would you be an arm or a leg?” asked Chad.

Uryuu blinked at him. “Come again, now?”

“Like a Voltron. Where we each have individual robots, but we combine--”

“I know what a Voltron is! It just… I wasn’t expecting… this sounds like an Orihime question!”

“It is an Orihime question. We’ve been talking about it for awhile, and we can’t decide. I feel like you and I should be the legs, and Orihime and Ichigo should be the arms, but Orihime thinks that you and Ichigo are the arms, and she and I are the legs. We’re both a little bothered by the fact that my power is literally arms, but I’m clearly a leg.”

“Who’s the head, then?” Uryuu frowned. “Kuchiki? You need five people to make a Voltron.”

“If we include Kuchiki we always include Abarai, and then we can’t figure out what to do with the sixth person. Usually, in that version, Ichigo is the head.”

“You can count me out, then, I am not participating in a Voltron with Kurosaki as the head.”

“That’s just what an arm guy would say.”

Ishida glared at Chad for a moment. “The _heart_. The sixth person is _the heart_.”

Chad’s visible eye widened for a moment, then crinkled happily. “Of course. That would be Orihime, then.”

Uryuu contemplated this for a moment. “It _should_ be Orihime. That’s the problem, actually. In an _optimal_ Voltron, a _well-designed_ Voltron, Orihime would be the heart, I would be the head, Kuchiki and Kurosaki would be the arms, and you and Abarai would be the legs, right?”

“Right.”

“But we’re not an optimal Voltron, we’re a terrible Voltron. Kurosaki is the heart, Kuchiki is the head. The legs are, counterintuitively, Abarai and _Orihime_ , because they hold the rest of us up. We would collapse without them. You and I are the arms. Which again, makes sense, because we both fight with our arms. You’re the melee arm and I am the ranged arm. QED.”

The corners of Chad’s mouth curved upward. “I knew you would know.” He sat back in his seat, and looked out the window at the passing landscape, smiling to himself.

“Is… is that it?”

“Yes. That was it.”

* * *

The train sped south, out of the city, into the open air.

Chad tapped on Uryuu’s wrist a little later, and asked about a cartoon show he remembered from his early childhood, before he moved to Mexico. It involved a family of bears or possibly of pigs. Uryuu had not been allowed to watch television as a child, and was, unfortunately, no help.

A bit later, Uryuu was feeling weary of his book. Chad was peacefully engrossed by the passing landscape, but he’d said he didn’t mind being bothered. Uryuu cautiously gave a tap.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” he said, “I was wondering what you were listening to.”

Chad chuckled. “Celia Cruz. “It’s traditional.”

Uryuu wondered what that meant.

“You?”

Uryuu glanced down at his phone. “Portishead, at the moment.”

“Hmm,” Chad hmmed. “Does it go with the book?”

Uryuu thought about it. He hadn’t consciously picked his music to go with the novel, but it certainly did match the tone of the book, a gloomy murder mystery in an isolated mountain town. “Yeah,” he nodded.

“I like to do that, too, when I read,” Chad noted.

They each went back to what they were doing.

* * *

“Do you mind walking?” Chad asked as they stepped out of the train station. “There’s a bus, but I like to walk.” The sun was bright, but since it was still early, it wasn’t too hot. Uryuu couldn’t see the water, but he could smell it, thick and salty in his nose.

“You… haven’t actually told me what we’re doing here, yet,” Uryuu pointed out.

“Oh,” Chad replied. “Going to the beach.”

Uryuu felt colossally stupid. “Er. I didn’t… bring a swimsuit.”

“Me either,” replied Chad. “I just wanted to see the ocean.”

“I see,” Uryuu replied. “Walking is fine. I wore my athletic shoes.”

Chad looked down. He was wearing sandals, and his feet looked huge next to Uryuu’s. “Good thinking.”

So, they walked. Uryuu was tempted to pull out his phone to figure out where they were on a map, but Chad seemed to know well enough where they were going. They walked east through town until they hit the river and turned south. Uryuu glanced into the shop windows. Chad pointed out a cat he spotted napping on a windowsill. They passed through a big park full of blooming hydrangeas, and decided that they both liked the blue ones best.

When they hit the coast, they turned southwest, although there were beaches in either direction. Chad took his sandals off to walk in the sand. Uryuu followed suit.

“My grandfather, Oscar, is buried in Mexico,” Chad said, as the water lapped at his feet, and by the weight of his voice, Uryuu realized that this was the reason they were here. “But he loved the ocean. So when I want to visit him, I go to the beach.”

Uryuu was quiet.

“I have been thinking…” Chad continued slowly, “that you have probably been thinking about your grandfather lately.”

This was very true, although Uryuu wasn’t sure he wanted to talk about it. His chest tightened. He’d had possibly the most comfortable morning of his life in terms of being with a person that he didn’t need to say anything to, but could if he wanted to. Now it was about to be ruined.

“There were a lot of things Oscar didn’t want me to know about him,” Chad frowned. “I think mostly that he got in fights when he was young and had… a lot of romances. But I knew about all that, because his old man friends would come by and tease him. He told me once that it was hard to be a grandfather, because he wanted to teach me all the things he had learned without me finding out how he had learned them.”

Uryuu thought about the arguments his father and his grandfather would have, late at night. He always thought his father had been cruel and judgemental, but lately, he wondered if it was just because Ryuuken knew things about Souken that Uryuu didn’t. Things he had done. Things he had known. Things Uryuu didn’t want to know and also couldn’t stop thinking about.

“Oscar was always trying to get me to bring friends around,” Chad hummed. “I never did because I wasn’t good at making friends. He would have liked you. You were exactly the sort of friend I think he wished I had.”

Uryuu stopped in his tracks. “Really? _Why_?”

Chad shrugged. “You always think about the things you do. You have reasons for the decisions you make. He was always trying to get me to do that.” Chad was silent for a moment. “And you care about your friends. That was very important to Oscar, too.”

They continued to walk. Chad appeared to have said what he was going to say. Apparently, Uryuu wasn’t required to say anything after all, at least not anything he didn’t want to.

Uryuu imagined what Chad’s grandfather must be like. He imagined what it would be like to be invited to a friend’s house, to feel a big warm hand clapped on his shoulder and hear a deep voice rumble, “Let’s go to the ocean.”

“Do you think he’s in Soul Society?” Uryuu asked. Chad must have been tempted to look. Uryuu knew he would have been, if he didn’t know for a fact that Souken had already moved on.

“I asked Abarai about that, actually,” Chad replied. “Abarai says it’s complicated, exactly how it gets decided where you go, but Oscar had a strong connection to his home and his friends, so he is most likely in the Mexican Land of the Dead.” A small smile crept onto Chad’s face. “My dream is to one day take a trip back to Mexico for _el Día de los Muertos_ , and see him again.”

Uryuu’s eyes widened. Somehow, he had never thought of that possibility. “Ahh, that sounds really cool!”

Chad nodded. “I would love to take you and Orihime and Ichigo, too. Abarai says I shouldn’t. He says Ichigo would surely cause an International Afterlife Incident.”

Uryuu chuckled. “Orihime and I would keep an eye on him for you.”

Chad looked at him out of the corner of his eyes. “Somehow, I’m not sure that would help.”

* * *

The day passed peacefully. They walked until the sun got hot and their feet got tired, and then they stopped for chilled ramen, topped with cold ham and crisp vegetables. Orihime called Chad at one point. Chad put them on speaker and much to Uryuu’s embarrassment, immediately related Uryuu’s opinions on their Voltron configuration. Orihime was delighted, naturally, and proceeded to ask if they would be regular robots or cat-shaped robots or maybe different animal robots. Kuchiki would want to be a rabbit for sure. Uryuu said they would talk it over and let her know. She demanded they take a beach selfie for her and wished them a safe trip home.

They didn’t talk much. Uryuu did some thinking, but he allowed himself to just think and feel and not have to come to any conclusions. He thought about his father. He thought about his grandfather. He thought about the other Sternritter. He thought about his friends. He thought about Chad’s grandfather. He thought about the ocean.

Mid-afternoon, they boarded the train again, hot and tired and content.

“Are you going to read your book again?” Chad asked. “Or do you want the window seat this time?”

Uryuu thought about it. “You can see over my head, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. I’ll take the window seat.”

Uryuu scrolled through the playlists on his phone. Nothing seemed quite right. “The Celia Cruz? You said it was traditional. That was for Oscar, right?”

“Oscar _loved_ Celia Cruz,” Chad informed him.

Uryuu nodded, and started typing into the search bar.

“Here.” Uryuu looked up to see Chad extending one of his earbuds. “I have a huge Afro-Cuban playlist. Oscar’s favorites. We can listen together. It’ll get us all the way home.”

Uryuu smiled, and accepted it.

the end!

* * *

Shinigami’s Cup! GOLDEN!

[Kurosaki]: I WANT TO BE A BEAR 🐻🐻🐻

[Ishida]: (someone is typing)

[Kurosaki]: rukia says we should all be rabbits and that fink abarai backed her up but I REFUSE

[Kurosaki]: i actually think rukia may have stolen renji’s phone

[Kurosaki]: for the purposes of falsifying his opinion

[Kurosaki]: vis a vis Voltrons

[Ishida]: (someone is typing)

[Kurosaki]: i don’t think renji even knows what a Voltron is

[Ishida]: (someone is typing)

[Kurosaki]: imma write back and ask him to prove it’s him by taking a selfie

[Kurosaki]: if it’s from some weird low angle i’ll know it’s rukia

[Ishida]: You can’t be a bear, we already decided that you’re going to be a bull.

[Kurosaki]: oh.

[Kurosaki]: i can live with bull. bulls are cool! 🐂 MOOOOOOOO!

[Kurosaki]: the old man wants to know if you wanna come over for dinner. he’s trying to build a campfire and he’s gonna grill fish on sticks. could be a disaster!!!

[Ishida]: Sounds great, I’ll be right over.

[Kurosaki]: it IS the year of the ox, u kno

[Kurosaki]: MOOOOOOOO!

**Author's Note:**

> sorry not sorry about the title


End file.
